My First Official Week (and a half)

Due to Diana's travel plans during the latter half of August and the beginning of September, I did not meet her again until September 8th. When I arrived at her office, Diana informed me that there was going to be a webinar in the conference room, so we headed over to listen in. There were other librarians seated around the conference table with a projector screen set up. We could hear someone speaking while we followed along with the Powerpoint slides. The topic of the day was assessment in libraries. I found the topic to be interesting. I remember learning about assessment in LIBR 204. The virtual presenters explained that assessment is vital to the success of libraries, especially since libraries have been changing so much during this period of rapid technological advancement. Methods of assessment were also discussed. Following the presentation, Diana and I discussed my revised learning outcomes for the semester and set a tentative schedule for the coming weeks. Diana explained that in the first half of my internship she wanted to focus on reference and instruction since she had the majority of her library instruction classes scheduled early in the semester.

The following week (9/13-9/17), I came in Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Tuesday, Diana gave me a tour of the 4th floor administration offices. She intended on introducing me to her colleagues, but many of them were out of the office. She said that many of them were probably busy teaching or taking care of other tasks. Afterward, I observed Diana as she was on duty for IM chat reference. Unfortunately, there were technical difficulties, so we were not receiving messages. In the meantime we discussed the various ways libraries are attempting to reach out to patrons by expanding the forms of reference services, like text messaging or live online chat.

On Thursday, Diana arranged for me to shadow John Wenzler, Associate Dean for Digital Futures, Information Technology and Technical Services. While at the reference desk, John pointed out that since the MLK Library is a joint library between the city of San Jose and SJSU, many of the questions asked at the reference desk are not necessarily reference questions. As I observed, many of the questions were directional or related to using the public computers nearby. Following my time at the reference desk I met up with Diana to sit in on an instructional class she was scheduled to teach for Professor Makani's Integrated Marketing Communications class. The time went by quickly in the class. I think it was because Diana made the class interactive and used examples that were interesting to students, like social networking. I later learned that Diana had experience teaching, which she said was very helpful because a big part of being an academic librarian nowadays involves teaching. As a somewhat shy person, I know this is an area I will have to work in if I want to be comfortable teaching in the future.

The following day, Diana had meetings in the morning so I looked at some of the tutorials and LibGuides on the MLK Library website. Diana mentioned that she wanted me to create a LibGuide (a webpage with resources related to a specific topic) later this semester, so I thought it would be wise to familiarize myself with the setup of already established LibGuides. Once Diana finished her meetings, I went with her to observe her at the reference desk. Upon arriving at the reference desk, we noticed that there was a security guard present. We learned that someone had been arrested on the fourth floor for masturbating while looking at pornography on a public computer. This was another reminder that we were in a joint library. I was informed that the forth floor has an area for public computers, but it is located in a corner, and out of the view of many others on the rest of the floor. The incident raised an interesting topic of concern in public libraries. Should patrons be able to access pornographic sites in public libraries? On the one hand, censorship would violate first amendment rights. On the other hand, not censoring is also a cause for concern since the library is open to everyone, including small children who could be exposed to such material. This is a topic that I'd like to look into more to see what has been written about it so far. After the security guard left, it was back to business as usual. Diana noted that it might be a little slow since there are not many classes taught on campus on Fridays. It was indeed slow on the academic end, but there were plenty of phone calls. I was surprised that one of the patrons on the phone was asking for phone numbers for local businesses. After Diana answered the first question, she told the caller that she could only help with one more request. She later informed me that there has to be a limit set to how many of those types of questions can be answered because otherwise the patron may keep asking for more requests when there are patrons waiting with actual reference questions.

My internship so far has been exciting. Already, I feel that I have learned so much just from observing and being in a library setting. I am so grateful to be working with Diana, who is very knowledgeable and friendly. I am eager to see what the rest of the semester has in store for me..